If you want to get into a TV room, become an expert in something. I know a staff writer in her early 20s who was hired at the last minute. She didn't go to NYU or Yale or Juilliard. She's not related to someone famous. She was an assistant at a management company and she loves horror movies. Her professors and friends tried to dissuade her from her fixation. "Write about something else. No one is going to hire a black woman for horror or thriller shows." (Yes, this was before GET OUT.) But that's what she loved so she didn't pay them any mind. She wrote her Black girl horror specs and screenplays while working as an assistant. She networked and went to conferences for horror movies, but not out of a sense of obligation. She just liked meeting with other people and finding a community. CAA snapped her up, she got some development stuff in the works, and all those people who tried to get her to write like Lorraine Hansberry or August Wilson look foolish. Write what you love, write what horrifies and captivates you, write what you can't get out of your head. Become an expert in something: politics, horror, police, vampires, ghosts, YA novels, family drama, Vatican history, anything. The world is filled with very good writers who can write about anything in a generally competent way. Don't be a respectable black writer or a Latino writer. Separate yourself from the 'very good' herd and become 'an essential expert.'
Once you have all that...make it dangerous. Even if you love a genre, push yourself to the limits of it, test your own morality, challenge your virtue comfort zones, know the rules so you know what to break. Readers can feel when a writer is merely recycling what they know vs. writing from an inferno that is consuming them. Conjure from the contradiction, the riddle, the enigma where your beliefs converge and clash with your intellect. Start a war between your heart and your mind, battle your PC'ness and your 'dirty, little, strange thought' self. Let the multitudes in you serve as prisms to refract the light of the world. Do not take hang around 'good enough' friends who don't have passions, but live on the principles of comfort. There is nothing new or innovative that comes from Sunday brunch. Comforts are for sleep and eating. Comforts smooth things out. Comfort is a silent and soft killer...and the world runs on it. The world will kill you with either criticism of 'this is not what you're supposed to be doing' or the applause of 'keep doing exactly that until you melt into a gray paste that is comfortable for me. Always practice two sides of the equation: passions and craft. The two work together like wings.
Once you have all that...make it dangerous. Even if you love a genre, push yourself to the limits of it, test your own morality, challenge your virtue comfort zones, know the rules so you know what to break. Readers can feel when a writer is merely recycling what they know vs. writing from an inferno that is consuming them. Conjure from the contradiction, the riddle, the enigma where your beliefs converge and clash with your intellect. Start a war between your heart and your mind, battle your PC'ness and your 'dirty, little, strange thought' self. Let the multitudes in you serve as prisms to refract the light of the world. Do not take hang around 'good enough' friends who don't have passions, but live on the principles of comfort. There is nothing new or innovative that comes from Sunday brunch. Comforts are for sleep and eating. Comforts smooth things out. Comfort is a silent and soft killer...and the world runs on it. The world will kill you with either criticism of 'this is not what you're supposed to be doing' or the applause of 'keep doing exactly that until you melt into a gray paste that is comfortable for me. Always practice two sides of the equation: passions and craft. The two work together like wings.
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